New Signs from Russia Posted by James Lamond

Last year when Dmitri Medvedev became president of Russia there where many questions about who he was and who would actually be in charge.  Analysts are still split on many of these issues including how much power Medvedev actually has.  Probably the most important question was whether or not Medvedev was a more reform-minded leader than his predecessor.   While I certainly do not know the answer to this, and I don’t think anyone actually does, lately there have been some real promising signs, although they may have more to do with the economic crisis that Medvedev's own reformist ambitions.

NSN Daily Update 4/17/2009 Posted by The National Security Network

See today's complete daily update here.

What We’re Reading

President Obama released Bush era memos from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Council authorizing the CIA to use waterboarding and other techniques widely accepted as constituting torture.  One of the more chilling memos was written by Jay Bybee, who served as the OLC’s Assistant Attorney General and now serves as a judge on the ninth circuit court of appeals. Dafna Linzer at Pro Publica points to one of the memos that mentions Hassan Guhl, a so-called ghost detainee whose whereabouts and detention status have been uncertain since his arrest in 2004.

President Obama visited Mexico and pledged that the U.S. would be a better partner in the drug wars, but stopped short of promising an assault weapons ban.

President Obama said that Cuba has to make the next move in working towards better relations.  Raul Castro says Cuba is ready “to discuss everything” with President Obama.

A U.S. patrol ambushed a group of Taliban fighters, a shift in tactics that has rallied American forces in the area.  The Taliban exploit class rifts to gain ground in Pakistan.

Commentary of the Day

Bush administration officials, former CIA Director Michael Hayden and former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, criticized President Obama’s release of the torture memos. The Washington Post called the move “courageous.”

Philip Stevens says President Obama needs to further loosen Cuba restrictions after half a century of failed policies.

Iranian scholar Changiz Pahlavan has advice for the U.S. on Afghanistan.

Reaction to Release of Bush Era OLC Interrogation Memos Posted by Adam Blickstein

U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Lee Gunn (Ret.). President, The American Security Project: I'm very pleased that the President and the Attorney General have released the interrogation memos this afternoon.

"After a career serving in the military, I believe that the men and women who serve America, in uniform and out, always deserve orders from their Commander in Chief that are clear, lawful, and correct.  In my view the opinions voiced in these memos contributed to placing our people who serve on the front lines in added danger: if Americans were captured, the risk of abuse by our enemy increased; if  Americans were tasked with the "enhanced" interrogation of detainees, their legal liability increased; if Americans were caused to violate their country's values and their own personal principles to extract information harshly, their souls and consciences were at risk. No Commander in Chief has the right to put the people who serve America in these positions.

"The Obama Administration has once again demonstrated the value of transparency in dealing with difficult issues and its confidence that the American people will evaluate the choices made by the previous administration fairly and objectively.  I applaud their release of these memos and their commitment to avoiding these horrible mistakes in the future."

Stephen Abraham, LTC, US Army Res. (Ret.), from 2004-2005, served in the Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants at Guantanamo Bay.  "The release of these memos confirms that the Constitution, American values, the rule of law, and ultimately the American people were each victims of the dubious legal decisions emanating from the Bush administration's Justice Department. Rather than honor laws that respect both our history and our obligations as a nation amongst many, laws that have successfully protected us from threat while preserving our human values, the Bush administration decided to place politics and expediently misguided policies over law and morality. In the end, this left us more vulnerable, not more secure.

"The release of these memos that provided legal cover for the use of torture ultimately do not reveal any new facts about torture nor do they not reveal new facts about the legal arguments made. In both regards, the subject of those memos has been the subject of public dialogue for many years.

"Crucially, it is in the disclosure itself of those memos today that affirms America is a nation of laws and that no man may place himself above those laws, no matter what the cause."

Sarah Mendelson, Director, Human Rights and Security Initiative, Center for Strategic and International Studies:  "The release of these memos, like the Executive Orders released January 23, demonstrates that the policies and priorities of President Obama stand in stark contrast to counterterrorism approach the Bush administration pursued.  Those policies damaged our reputation, served as recruitment tools for those who wished us harm, and enabled dictators across the world.  The United States now has the opportunity to demonstrate that we can protect our nation and prosecute those who commit crimes without casting aside the Constitution and rule of law.

"This is also an opportunity for the United States to further expand and utilize the professionals trained in non-coercive techniques of interrogation who can be deployed at a moment's notice.

"The bottom line is the Obama administration has affirmed in its actions today what the President said in his inaugural address: that "we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals."

Why Have Realists Become Marginalized? Posted by Ilan Goldenberg

Joseph Nye and Steve Walt both decry how academia has become removed from practical policymaking and provide some steps for how it can get more engaged.  It’s also worth pointing out that for all of academia’s faults, in some cases this has a lot to do with the policymaking process itself.  If policymakers don’t like the political implications of solutions proposed by academics, they tend to just dismiss the advice and by doing so ignore some pretty proactive and thoughtful thinking.

I’m thinking specifically here about the case of academic foreign policy realists.  I wrote a few months ago about the fact that a foreign policy consensus had emerged in Washington that included pragmatists like Gates, as well as liberal hawks and liberals.  As was soon pointed out to me, one group that is clearly missing from this list is the academic realists, who have traditionally been an important voice in American foreign policy.

It’s not as if this strand of thinking ever fully dominated American foreign policy (I don’t think we would have built thousands of nuclear weapons during the Cold war if realists were in charge).  But important and influential American foreign policymakers such as Kissinger, Brzezinski and Kennan all came out of the realist school.  And even into the 1990s when you had real opposition from conservatives in Congress to interventions in the Balkans, the realist school held some real sway. 

But that seems to have evaporated.  These days the realist perspective is all but non-existent in Washington.  A large part of that has to do with the fact that their ideas are so politically unpopular that they are simply dismissed out of hand as unrealistic.  Many realists have come to the conclusion that as an unfettered unipolar power the United States will inevitably overextend itself and scare others into aligning against it, and thus over time weaken itself.  The best prescription for this is retrenchment that includes dramatic reductions in military spending and the reduction of our presence around the world – very politically unpopular ideas.

So, When Barry Posen writes a thoughtful piece about the need for restraint, or when Richard Betts has a compelling article about U.S. military strategy for the 21st century that involves large cuts in military spending, policymakers may read it.  They may even think it is very smart.  But then they tell themselves that this idea is politically unrealistic and go on about their business.

The sad irony is that realist theory predicts its own political irrelevance during a period of unipolarity.  After all, if one believes that unipolarity will likely lead to imperial overstretch, then you would expect that in a democracy there would a political consensus around an activist foreign policy and that voices that are calling for restraint would be ignored

Of course, you could argue that realism’s irrelevance also has to do with the fact that it has a harder time explaining the post cold war world or dealing with very real transnational issues that do need to be addressed.  The financial crisis, global warming, global epidemics, or terrorism all have real national security implications and realism doesn’t do a great job in explaining these phenomenons or providing prescriptions of how to deal with them.  There is no question that realism has its limits.

But it’s not as if realism doesn’t have anything to contribute anymore.  It is often ahead of the curve.  To take just one example, prior the 2004 elections a broad coalition of realist thinkers, including some of the biggest names in the business, signed onto a letter in the NY Times calling for swift end to the war in Iraq.  This came at a time when almost no one in the mainstream political establishment, Democrats included, was talking about withdrawal.  And policymakers would be wise to at seriously take into account the warnings that realists are currently voicing about Afghanistan.

Realists have played an important role over the years in checking American tendencies towards ideology and injected some cold hard calculations about the nature of power into the foreign policy conversation.  Even if one doesn’t agree with many realist ideas, policymakers would be wise to take the realist school more seriously instead of automatically dismissing it because of the politically difficult choices that it prescribes for a unipolar world.

Update:  Matt Yglesias adds a nice corrective to my piece arguing that it's not really "popularity" in the traditional public opinion sense of the word, that is the barrier here.  It is the various pressure points that when combined put the idea of restraint outside the political mainstream.  When I wrote about "popularity," I wasn't strictly referring to public opinion.  But I could have been much clearer about that point and I think Matt's description is dead on.

Everyone Should Dress Like George Will Posted by Ilan Goldenberg

 

So given that we are in the middle of an economic crisis, two wars and dealing with a whole host of other issues, I'm glad the Washington Post and George Will decided to devote 750 words to the evil of jeans.  Perhaps the best part:

For men, sartorial good taste can be reduced to one rule: If Fred Astaire would not have worn it, don't wear it. For women, substitute Grace Kelly.

Children of the Taliban Posted by Ilan Goldenberg

I noticed that last night Spencer Ackerman also watched the chilling and mesmerizing Frontline documentary Children of the Taliban.  Spencer and I were both particularly moved by a scene that Spencer describes:

Allow me to note as well that a teenager who survived a U.S. drone strike that killed his cousin -- dogs were eating the boy's corpse and so his family could only bury his legs -- tells an interviewer, "God willing, I will join the Taliban." His best friend vows to join the Pakistani army to fight al-Qaeda. The two boys nonchalantly confide in the interviewer that they will kill each other if necessary.

I strongly recommend watching the whole thing. Very powerful and moving.

Bring Back the Powell Doctrine Posted by Michael Cohen

I've been writing a lot in recent weeks about the follies of counter-insurgency doctrine and it's caused me to reminisce about that old standby from the 1990s: the Powell Doctrine. 

You remember the Powell Doctrine; liberal hawks hated it because it tended to preclude humanitarian interventions and neo-conservatives dismissed it because it meant no wars of choice and the muscular military strategy that they favored. You don't hear much about it anymore, which is kind of surprising, particularly when you consider that after the awful carnage of the past 6 years, it couldn't be more relevant.

With many of the leading figures in the armed forces learning the wrong lessons from the war in Iraq it's worth re-examining the basic questions that Powell said needed to be asked before the United States went to war.

• Is the political objective we seek to achieve important, clearly defined and understood?
• Have all other nonviolent policy means failed?
• Will military force achieve the objective?
• At what cost?
• Have the gains and risks been analyzed? 
• How might the situation that we seek to alter, once it is altered by force, develop further and what might be the consequences?

In addition to these queries, three others are generally also added to the list: Is the action supported by the American people? Do we have genuine broad international support? And is there an exit strategy?

But what made the Powell Doctrine so relevant in the 1990s (and its precursor the Weinberger Doctrine in the 1980s) is that it reflected the right lessons from the debacle in Vietnam: namely that America must avoid a protracted military engagement in a conflict that does not impact the country's vital interests and it must make the use of force an absolute last resort.

Now it's worth noting that while the precepts of the Powell Doctrine were followed to the letter in the Gulf War (and quite successfully I might add); twelve years later during the Iraq war both the civilian leadership (which included Colin Powell, of course) and the uniformed military pretty much ignored it. In 2003, there was no clear political objective to the war in Iraq; non-violent measures or even alternative force packages were never considered; no cost-benefit analysis of going to war was performed; little thought was given to the consequences of invading and occupying Iraq; the war barely had majority popular support; with a few exceptions our key Allies were generally opposed and, of course, as we well know there was no exit strategy.

Now one would think after another horrible military and political debacle - that bears striking resemblance to the tragedy of the Vietnam War - the military and civilian leadership would be running with open arms to embrace a doctrine that keeps them out of protracted conflicts with unclear political objectives that are not in the national interest.

Yet, the exact opposite is occurring. Instead of learning the lesson that the first four years of the Iraq War should have taught us - force must be a last resort, the US military is not equipped to do nation-building, military incursions must be limited and they must be combined with a clear political objective; COIN advocates are fixated on the transitory success of the past two years in Iraq and the applications of those techniques for future conflicts (and I use the word success lightly as it is hardly clear that counter-insurgency techniques were even responsible for the temporary respite in violence in Iraq).

Now of course some COIN-advocates will tell you that Iraq would not have been such a debacle had counter-insurgency techniques been used from the very beginning; but of course this is an unknowable proposition and to be sure, there was zero political will for the massive undertaking that would have been required for a COIN-strategy to have worked. Instead of arguing whether the US should have been trying to eat soup with a knife from the very beginning of the Iraq war - I would argue we should have just skipped the meal altogether.

The simple reality is that counter-insurgency techniques are only activated if you ignore the crucial lesson about the use of force - it must be an absolute last resort, it must be limited and there must be an exit strategy. But counter-insurgency advocates, and their iron clad belief in a Long War with Islamic extremists, as opposed to a near-term conflict with Al Qaeda believe that the US must be prepared to use force not less often, but more often. This is a recipe for more Iraqs and more Vietnams.

If this terrible war should teach us anything it is that the bar to get involved in overseas wars should be raised even higher than that suggested by Powell. We must only use force when our absolute vital interests are threatened or the homeland is at risk.

Does the US need to have a strong military to deter future conflicts? Absolutely. But the key to effective deterrence comes not necessarily from the use of that force, but instead the threat of force and clear red lines that will provoke it. And this doesn't mean cratering our military, but it does mean focusing our military on those places where we have the greatest comparative military advantage - our Air Force, our Navy, our Special Forces, our force projection capability, our utilization of technology etc. It also means minimizing those elements of our armed forces where our advantage is minimal at best: large set piece conflicts or significant, troop-heavy, military engagements because once we've put a significant number of boots on the ground - anything can happen.  Some may argue that "you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you" to mean that you can't predict future conflicts. Hooey. The future may be unknowable, but the criteria by which you use force need not be. Prepare for the conflicts you need to fight and the ones you can win.

That's the essence of the Powell Doctrine; avoid at all costs the unknowables that the use of American military force can engender. As Robert McNamara reminds us (and he has some experience on the issue "war is so complex it's beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend all the variables."

It seems like a pretty good thing to remember for possible future conflicts to come.

NSN Daily Update 4/15/2009 Posted by The National Security Network

See today's complete daily update here.

What We’re Reading

President Obama will go to Mexico tomorrow, ahead of the Summit of the Americas, which begins Friday in Trinidad and Tobago.  Guns continue to flow into Mexico’s drug war.  Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will name a “border czar.” Ahead of her trip to Haiti and the region, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton pledges $50 million in aid for the beleaguered nation.

A Guantanamo detainee spoke with a reporter from Al Jazeera, the first media interview of a Guantanamo prisoner.  It is not clear how the detainee contacted the reporter.

A crowd threw rocks at Afghan women protesting new marriage laws.

Russia may need to seek international loans.

Commentary of the Day

Tom Friedman says that “this is not the great age of diplomacy” and fears the middle ground.

The New York Times looks at the role of women in Afghanistan and Pakistan as illustrating the cost of extremism.

William Ratliff and the LA Times applaud President Obama’s loosening of restrictions on Cuba.

The Koh (Faux) Controversy Posted by David Shorr

Over at the New York Times Opinionator there is a good bloggregation on the Harold Koh nomination to be Secretary Clinton's legal adviser. Honestly though, this is a lot of sound and fury signifying very little. Chris Borgen at Opinio Juris makes the key point:

Neither Koh, nor anyone else I know of says that foreign norms “dictate” anything in the US. Foreign law, as Justice Kennedy explained, can be used as persuasive evidence or, as Justice Breyer put it in a speech at the ASIL, there is “enormous value in any discipline of trying to learn from the similar experience of others.” That’s it. Nothing nefarious. No black helicopters or anything. Justices cite to law review articles, social science studies, and even Gilbert and Sullivan. Sometimes, they may note the experiences of judges in other countries and learn from them. Citing to foreign law is not allowing the world to dictate to the US; it is simple intellectual honesty.

Sounds like a pretty simple and clear distinction to me. Over here we have the purported threat of treating other lands' laws or judicial rulings as binding or precedent. And as Prof. Borgen says, no one in this debate makes any such claim. And then over here we have the idea that useful insight might be gained from such sources. Come to think of it, in the above sentences, I just read (and cited) the blog Opinio Juris because I found a well articulated point there. In doing so, however, I did not implicitly accept the binding authority of the blog. Now really, is there a blurred line between these two ways of treating a source?  

Which brings me to Jeffrey Toobin's online New Yorker column, which places the burden of proof on the administration and supporters of Koh's nomination:  

The issue taps into deep feelings of nationalism, mostly but not only among conservatives. Citizens of the European Union countries regard the power of that central authority with great concern, but that’s nothing compared to the skepticism here about the United Nations and other international organizations. It might be easy to assume, given Koh’s manifest qualifications for the job, that he will cruise to confirmation. He still may. But this issue is politically radioactive, and he and his sponsors ought to approach it with great caution.

Here's my question, are we talking about nationalist feelings, or nativist xenophobia? Once we clarify that the use of foreign legal sources is simply a matter of learning from others, the argument of the critics is basically that we have nothing to learn. If that's nationalism, it's pretty brittle stuff -- and unworthy of a great republic. 

Upping the Swat Game Posted by Patrick Barry

There has been a lot of fuss over Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari's decision to approve Sharia regulation for the restive Swat valley (in the Malakand division of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province) following the passage of a parliamentary resolution on the matter.  Knowledgeable hands including SFRC Chairman Sen. John Kerry (here) have expressed concern, concern which is not at all unjustified given the serious precedent this decision sets

But before everyone goes completely off the deep end, I think we should all be mindful that beneath the stories describing an emboldened Taliban and a weak Pakistani government, there is a much longer, deeper narrative, which does include a trend toward extremism, but also contains older traditions of religious politics, provincialism, and justice. I hope to blog more on this in the days to come, but for anyone looking to get a sense of the complexities at work here, I would strong recommend listening to Joshua White's speech at the Middle East Institute last month. No western analysis I've seen comes close to rivaling its nuance.